


Finals Week

by saphinias



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, M/M, american school system
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-17
Updated: 2013-08-17
Packaged: 2017-12-23 18:14:26
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 940
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/929559
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/saphinias/pseuds/saphinias
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Harry is stressed over finals and Louis contentedly observes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Finals Week

**Author's Note:**

> Basically I was stressed over finals so I wrote this. It doesn’t really have an ending but I’m gonna post it anyway. I may go back and try to conclude it but probably not? So yeah, enjoy.

About a week before finals, Harry really started buckling down and stressing out.  He always had the freak out that ‘oh my god finals are soon fuck I’ve got to get my shit together’ about two weeks beforehand.  And it’s not like Louis didn’t know this was coming, he did.  He was ready this time, just like the last two times.  

Louis was kind of the opposite of Harry in terms of schoolwork and finals.  He went by the motto that if they were testing to see how much he retained, then he was going to take it ‘honestly’.  And by honestly he meant that he wasn’t going to study, he was just going to walk in and take the damn thing, and get what he got and shrug it off when it turned out to be a C.  C’s weren’t bad, they were completely average.  Louis could deal with that when it came to school, it’s not like he would retain this shit for any longer than he had to.  Plus, you could absolutely get a degree with a C.

Harry had kind of a system, though.  At the beginning of the semester, he would get high A’s for a good month and a half.  After that, he would just bullshit everything, and study for tests the night before.  (He was the king of rearranging a few different articles into a cohesive paper.)  Apparently it worked for him, because he got low A’s for the whole year like that.  His talent at obsessively caring just enough to get him the grade he wanted was commendable, really.  But then finals came around and he drove himself mad trying to memorize it all.

He would start making dozens of lists.  One for each subject, at first.  Then one for each section.  Then as he pored over it again and again he rewrote the lists into smaller lists, leaving off the stuff he had memorized from the last list.  He was always writing, always.  Instead of saying the stuff out loud he had to write it, spell it all out.  (Muscle memory, Harry had said once.  Louis didn’t think that was the right word for it.  In his high school freshman English class his teacher had called it ‘visual learning’.  Harry had just shrugged when Louis told him that, and said that whatever you called it, it worked for him.)

 By the night before finals started he paced the apartment floor, muttering that one term that he still couldn’t remember no matter how hard he tried over and over, scratching hard at the crease of his elbow and the place where his thumb and index finger met. (Harry did a lot of that when he was stressed.  He scratched hard at soft places and bit his cheek and pulled at his hair.  When Louis asked about it Harry said that he guessed it hurt, yeah, but it felt good.  He said it kind of settled him.)

Louis asked him sometimes if he wanted him to quiz him, but Harry always said no.  He would just sit down and start writing on a blank page again.  He would fill up all the empty space left in his notebooks.  Every margin would be covered in French and physics and statistics and little doodles of eyes.  That’s the only thing Harry ever doodled, eyes.  He drew them so much that he hardly thought about it anymore, or that’s what Louis thought.

And he always sat in the most uncomfortable looking positions.  But then again, Louis wasn’t as flexible as Harry.  But still.  It made his back and neck ache just to look at him.  

When Harry came to bed it was always just after ten, because he made himself get half-decent amounts of sleep.  Louis was almost always already in bed, usually reading something from his lit class that he had just skimmed over or read the SparkNotes on.  Louis would put whatever it was away and turn off the light and try to get comfortable next to a tossing and turning Harry.  Harry’s mind was still running through with words that he couldn’t get out of his head now that they were hammered in, and even after he finally fell asleep he was fidgety the whole night.

Louis didn’t mind Harry like this.  He thought he might if he was like this before every test, but it was only twice a year.  Louis did three things to prepare for this one week: find a good series on Netflix to watch, because he couldn’t use the TV because it drove Harry even more nuts than he already was, buy stuff to make them healthy meals (a stressed out Harry + sugar + carbs readily available = nothing good), and buy sleeping pills that Harry never used, but that Louis sometimes did.

The best part of the week was when the muttering of those last few terms that Harry still couldn’t commit to memory, turned into him belting them out in nonsensical tunes.  And then belting it out and dancing to it.  Sometimes for French words that he just couldn’t get, he made Louis yell it at him.  Louis didn’t know why, but it worked.  (Last time it had been ‘PERDRE!’ which apparently meant ‘to lose’.)

The worst park of the week was that Louis wasn’t allowed to touch him when he was studying.  Which was essentially all of the time.  Louis discovered this during the first time Harry had studied for finals while they lived together.  He would shove him away and tell him to get off.

But it was alright, Louis understood and didn’t mess with him.

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry about the non-ending thing.


End file.
